THE KIDS AT CITY BALLET, L.A. (CBLA)

I am lucky enough to be the yoga director for this group, City Ballet of L.A. and to teach three classes to the dancers and their mothers on Saturday mornings. They are the only group of kids anywhere I have taught yoga, that you can hear a pin drop in the class. What is that?! I have taught up to 30+ kids in a room and never have had to "wrangle" or "remind" anyone about respecting Self and others. I feel so privileged to guide these angels at this tender time in their lives. Cards are stacked against them as young Latina and African American women living in this downtown jungle, but we are moving the cards and empowering them with dance, yoga, the arts, a Voice to speak out and take up space.

Tomorrow they will be taking up space along with the adult pros (the Company) in Nutcracker Swings at the Nate Holden Theatre on Washington Bl.(around Rimpau). Robyn, the artistic director, incorporates Duke Ellington's Nutcracker with Tchaikovsky. It takes place in World War 2 and it's gorgeous to look at. The best thing about this version of Nutcracker is it is mercifully about 90 minutes, if that, with no intermisson. Last year, we played The Orpheum and it was a blast to be inside that amazing space. But I like that Nate Holden is being used and it's my hope, living so close to that theatre, that more art comes to the space. More art, more life, more people.

SAFETY IS A MYTH UNTIL ITS ME

People have things and places they call their sanctuary. Like the ocean, or the libaray, or a temple of some sort, or the mountains, the desert, a yoga class, a recovery meeting, church, temple, a nightclub.

Here is my recent lesson on making places and things my sanctuary: They become the opposite.

The second I decided that a certain yoga class was my "sanctuary" - yes definitely my "one safe place" in the city, my "only solace" in the urban jungle - I got stalked there.
Insult to injury - I found little support, though I had been coming regularly for 10 years. I was told "All are welcome to this path, there is a reason he is here. you don't own the yoga." huh?

I had to change my schedule totally and haven't found my groove there since. I now sit in the back, not the front. But there was a gift in it. I felt so viscerally, how much I had put that place and those teachers and spiritual people into the position that should be reserved for either A. My own Divine Inner-Teacher/Self or B. My Higher Power
Again, once I decided a certain teacher was "my one spiritual teacher" - this teacher showed an unkind side and I was shattered.

I thought I had learned the lesson. But then I replaced venues. Just when the recovery meeting I started in my neighborhood, turned into "my cozy safe magical place" - wow, my feeings have been hurt there several times, why? I assumed everyone was safe and loving etc. Right. Wake up call: people come to 12 step meetings because they are insane on some level, and I forget that and turn them into safe angels. It's not the people who are safe, it's the group consciousness, the amazingly safe way the program is structured. People get hurt before and after meetings, not during.

Wow. Fortunately I do have spiritual tools and the ability to see the bigger picture and not be afraid to shift old patterns of thinking when making people and places and things bigger than me doesn't work. Yet it takes a painful and repetitive lesson for me to change permanently. My new perspective, based on experience...

Nothing and no one is "safe" on planet earth. And so what?

I have to be my own safe person, my own sactuary, my own best friend, as the cliche instructs. Period.

As long as there are people, there is going to be conflict (hopefully not ALL the time) But yes, even in a yoga class, even at the ocean, even before the alanon meeting. And once I stop looking for "safe havens" and simply walk through different spaces with grace and courage, adapting, with eyes open and sensitive to the environment, then I don't have to live like a wandering exile, compartmentalizing places and people into Safe and Unsafe, trusting This One with my firstborn and That One, not at all. They're just people, many sicker than others, many surprisingly sane and balanced. And they don't all have to like me and I don't have to like them. It's all an illuion anyway and two weeks later, does it really matter? So that's the good news.